The blathering idiot was thinking about the Mayan calendar, the supposed end of days soon to be at hand, and of his recent failed run for the highest office in the land and asked himself: What polka goes best with the end of time?
Tag Archives: accordion
The blathering idiot and the Pro-Accordion party, part 8, fourth grade
The blathering idiot was in a fourth grade class. Why he was in a fourth grade class, he wasn’t sure, except that Lydia had told him they were studying about the civic process of getting elected to office and that she knew the teacher and had told the teacher she was working with a candidate for the highest office in the land, and the teacher asked if the candidate might be available to speak to her class, and Lydia had said sure, and so here he was.
They were standing in the school, a small old house actually that had been converted to a full time school many years ago.
The blathering idiot looked up the stairway leading to the second floor. The fourth grade was immediately to his right at the top of the stairs. He felt butterflies and breakfast churning in his stomach. He wasn’t ready for this. He was sure of it. And they were late. The teacher would rap his knuckles for being late now just like she did when he was in the fourth grade. It didn’t matter that it was a different school in a different city with a different teacher. There was a quantum connection among all fourth grade teachers and they universally want to rap your knuckles for being late to class, no matter the excuse. No excuse was ever good enough to overcome the quantum connection.
Climbing the stairway back to fourth grade. “I don’t want to do this,” he said.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said.
Wasn’t there a show about being smarter than a fifth grader? Maybe this was a prelude to talking to fifth graders.
“Think of it as practice for when you get on the road and are campaigning.”
Fifth graders for sure, he thought.
“She’ll wrap my knuckles,” he said.
“What?” Lydia asked.
He looked at her. He couldn’t disguise the fear. “We’re late and she wants to wrap my knuckles!”
The first grade teacher leaned out of the door to her room and pointed a ruler at them. “Quiet, please.”
She looked younger than he remembered his first grade teacher looking. Prettier, too. His stomach calmed slightly. Then he noticed the ruler and his stomach started fluttering again.
“Wait here,” Lydia said.
Before he could say anything, she was up the stairs and knocking on the fourth grade teacher’s door. Then she disappeared inside the room and the blathering idiot’s stomach started fluttering again.
It was probably only a few minutes, but to the blathering idiot it felt like a few hours. Then the door to the fourth grade classroom opened, Lydia poked her head out, and she waved the blathering idiot upstairs.
Slowly he trudged up the stairs. It felt like school all over again.
When he reached the top, the fourth grade teacher opened the door and invited him in. She smiled and her face looked more kind than stern. The blathering idiot looked at her hand. She was not holding a ruler.
He shrugged and trudged into the room.
Lydia introduced him as a candidate running for the highest office in the land and the fourth graders looked at him oddly.
“For real?” one boy with red hair asked.
“For real,” Lydia said.
“Now, Jeffry,” the teacher said, “Remember to raise your hand first and wait to be called on before asking a question.”
The blathering idiot glanced over at her. He still saw no ruler. But he had a sudden urge for his sock monkey, the one he had when he was five and kept with him up to the fourth grade, where a couple of the boys tugged it away from him and tore it apart.
Every kid in the classroom raised a hand.
The teacher pointed at a little girl in the back of the room. She looked small for a fourth grader and she wore very large glasses.
“Yes, Abigail, you can ask your question.”
Abigail stood up beside her desk, but didn’t look any taller than when she was sitting in it. In fact, she looked a little shorter.
The blathering idiot leaned slightly toward as if he anticipated her voice to be as small as she was.
Instead, the room filled with a large, loud, high-pitched squeal as she asked her question: “And why are you running for this office, anyway?”
He looked over at Lydia and he felt his face getting hot. Would a small fourth grader with big glasses understand running for the highest office in the land to make your on again, off again girl friend jealous, prove her wrong that you would never amount to anything? Would a fourth grader understand that he was running because he now wanted to spend more time with Lydia, though she had never indicated more than a professional interest in him? Would a school kid understand that within him as probably within many grown men, there is a desire to better at something than anybody else, to prove he was unique, one-of-a-kind, just like his parents had always told him he was growing up.
He remembered his own sock monkey, torn apart in the fourth grade, where the teacher rapped his knuckles for being late.
He stared at the exaggerated eyes of the little girl and he remembered what the consultant had told him: keep his answers brief and keep his answers on the level of the person asking the question.
So, instead of trying to explain all his true jumble of thoughts and feelings, he said, “Because I thought it would be fun to be elected to the highest office in the land. Maybe some day you’ll want to, too.”
The little girl shook her head so vigorously, her shoulders and torso moved. “No. I want to be a veterinarian. I think that would be more fun. Don’t you?”
The blathering idiot felt his knuckles sting as if they had just been smacked by a ruler. He was sure he wasn’t ready for fifth grade … and he wanted his sock monkey.
The blathering idiot and the Pro-Accordion Party, part 7, campaign wheels
The blathering idiot saw Lydia enter the room where he was being schooled by the consultant and was relieved when she walked up to them and asked to speak to the blathering idiot alone for a few minutes.
Even the consultant appeared eager to give her that time. He leapt up from his chair and was tripping the light fantastic as he stepped out of the room. Or so it appeared to the blathering idiot.
“How goes it?” Lydia asked.
The blathering idiot shrugged. “Seems like I gotta play dumb to get elected.”
“Surveys show time and time again that people want to elect somebody just like them.”
“Then why don’t those people run for office?”
Lydia smiled and then laughed. “You do have a way about you.”
“And what does that mean?”
She sat down in the chair the consultant had been sitting in. She placed a hand on his knee. She looked directly at him and he at her. He thought maybe this was the moment he had been waiting for, the moment when she would ask him what he was doing tonight, would he like to come over for a home cooked meal and they could discuss campaign strategy and other things.
He half closed his eyes in dreamy anticipation.
Instead, she said, “Let’s just say you’re weird, but in an endearing sort of way, and that’s what we need to capitalize on in this campaign.”
The blathering idiot opened his eyes wide. Weird? Endearing? How did that stack up with being someone just like everyone else? Would you want to have a beer with somebody weird but endearing?
He thought about that last question for a minute. Would he have dinner with somebody weird, but endearing?
“Here, let me show you something,” Lydia said.
She stood up and offered her hand. He took it and followed her out of the room, out of the building. Once outside she led him over to a vehicle.
“Our budget is tight, but we got what we could afford, within the consultant’s guidelines, for your official campaign vehicle.”
“It’s … it’s a … truck,” the blathering idiot said.
“Not just any truck,” Lydia said.
“Yeah, it’s an old truck.”
“Politicians have traveled on trains, in cars, even in trucks before when campaigning. We thought this truck would speak of a connection to the past of this great country, add a sense of history to our young Pro-Accordion Party.”
“Will it make it? After all, it looks pretty well used … and rusted in spots.”
“That’s the other beauty of it,” she said. “That patina of wear gives us that underdog touch, that little engine that could meme.”
“Meme?” the blathering idiot asked.
“I’ll explain later.”
The blathering idiot nodded, but he doubted the explanation would be over a homemade dinner.
Campaigning on a budget: the blathering idiot’s official campaign wheels.
The blathering idiot and the Pro-Accordion Party, part 5: the accordion and vegatables
Sometimes not knowing is important … at least to your electability.
“But I don’t know how to play the accordion,” the blathering idiot said once he understood that he would be posing in ads with one.
“That’s okay,” the consultant said. “That will put you in touch with most of our potential voters. They don’t know, either. It will give you the common touch.”
“But I took this position as candidate for the highest office in the land so I wouldn’t be just another common man.”
The consultant looked at the blathering idiot for a moment and then shrugged.
“People want to feel they could sit down and have a beer with you.”
“But I don’t like beer,” the blathering idiot said. “I do like broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels Sprouts.”
The consultant’s nose scrunched up. “Well, we don’t have to let the voters know that.”
“You mean voters don’t like people who eat their vegetables?”
The consultant opened his mouth to say something, paused, and then closed his florid lips.
The blathering idiot and the Pro-Accordion Party, part 4, armadillo
Lydia walked up to the blathering idiot. Her face looked as if had had somebody tugging on it, stretching it out and down.
Everybody else filed out of the small conference room as well. Nobody looked like he or she had had a good time.
Lydia managed a wan smile. There and gone. More a hope of a smile than a real one.
If politics is like this, the blathering idiot thought, why do people go into it?
“We have decided on a Pro-Accordion Party mascot.” She heaved a sigh as if it were the heaviest thing she would ever carry. “We have decided on the armadillo.”
“Armadillo?” the blathering idiot asked.
“Armadillo? Oooh!” Xenia held her nose.
The Pro-Accordion Party selects the armadillo for its mascot, in part because it can collapse into a small space, like an accordion.
Lydia glared at Xenia for a moment, then turned back to the blathering idiot.
“Look at it this way,” she said, “the armadillo has protection like the turtle you were fond of, but can also collapse itself down into a smaller space—”
“Like an accordion,” the blathering idiot said.
“Exactly,” Lydia said.
“Armadillo?” Xenia turned, found a seat, and sat down.
Lydia looked at Xenia. “We did a quick focus group and found there were too many people who had negative connotations associated with a turtle, even one in a red, white, and blue hat. When we asked those same people about armadillos, most had no direct experience with an armadillo and had largely neutral thoughts about the creature. A few even confused with an ant eater. That gives us a chance to clearly define it and why it is our mascot.”
“And how do you intend to define the PAP mascot?” the blathering idiot asked.
“We’re working on that,” Lydia said.
“Who did you focus group?” Xenia asked. “My mom did that for a while.”
“We called up ten people at random from the phone book.”
“Ten people?” The blathering idiot asked.
“Only ten?” Xenia asked.
“They were at random. That was all we had time and money for. We only have a small budget for such things. A big part of the discussion in there was over spending that money on this. Most didn’t want to spend any money on this until I reminded if we didn’t we’d stuck with the turtle.”
Stuck with the turtle. That didn’t set well with the blathering idiot, but before he could say anything, Xenia asked a question.
“So you are picking your mascot because ten random people said so?”
“That’s eight more than you two,” Lydia said.
The blathering idiot couldn’t argue with that. Still, an armadillo?
Filed under blathering idiot, Pro-Accordion Party, Story by author
The blathering idiot and politics, part 1, I guess
Maybe it was the full moon the night before … or maybe it was his girlfriend Zoey.
Maybe it was the full moon the night before, it being a blue moon, or maybe it was his girlfriend Zoey telling him he would never amount to anything, but the blathering idiot was out walking when came across a bumper sticker that read: “Pro-Accordion & I Vote!”
He saw one, then another, and another. It was the parking lot in front of a small storefront, but each of the cars had that bump sticker on it.
The blathering idiot looked up and in the store front window was a banner that said the same thing, and below it was a hand lettered signed that said: “Come join the party.”
It was the middle of the day, but the blathering idiot could use something to lift his spirits, and maybe a party would be it.
He opened the swinging front door. The bell above the door tinkled.
Everybody inside was hunched over his or her computer. There was one accordion in the room. It was up on top of a bookshelf.
A young woman with a clipboard trotted up to him. “Are you here to join the Accordion Party?”
She stepped even closer, the bottom of the clipboard pointed toward him. He surmised that either meant he was supposed to sign the paper on the clipboard or she was using it to shove him back toward the door.
“This is the Accordion Party?”
The blathering idiot saw them on several cars int he parking lot, and banner in the window proclaiming “Pro-Accordion and I Vote!”
“Pro-Accordion,” she said.
She pointed to the bottom of the sheet. “You need to sign here and print your name, address, and way to contact you there.”
“Why?”
“We have to keep track of our volunteers.”
“For the party?”
She nodded. The name tag on her turquoise blouse said: “Hi, my name is Lydia.”
“The accordion party?”
“The Pro-Accordion Party,” she said.
“There are no snacks?”
She shook her head.
“No music?”
“If we win.”
“Win?”
“The campaign.”
“Which one?” he asked.
“The big one.”
“Okay. Who’s your candidate?”
She sighed. “Our original candidate dropped out. Said he couldn’t fit it in around his busy schedule of playing weddings and polka dances, graduation parties and such.”
The blathering idiot had never heard of accordion music at a graduation party, but it had been a few years since he graduated and maybe things had changed.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“For a candidate?” she asked.
The blathering idiot nodded.
“We’re looking for one right now. Would you like to be it?”
He thought about that for a moment. Zoey had challenged him to do something.
“But I don’t know how to play the accordion,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter. You can learn as you go.”
“But I’ve never run for elected office before.”
She shrugged. “You can learn that, too, as you go.”
“Who will teach me?”
The young woman paused. She had large, wide set eyes and dark hair. “Probably, I will.”
If doing this made Zoey a little jealous, there might not be anything wrong with that, either.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m in.”
(To be continued, more or less.)
Filed under 2012, blathering idiot, Photo by author, Story by author
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